This looks to be a great site and I hope you won't mind if I climb aboard too..I've met a few of you over at e-sangha and am glad to find you here. I'm 42, a married father of two, live in central Maryland, have had a casual interest in Buddhism since my teens but began to look into it more seriously a couple of years ago -- after, of all things, finding a dhamma text in the drawer of a hotel where I was staying. Yep, right there with the Gideon's and the Book of Mormon.

Still at an early stage in my practice and study, and haven't yet decided on a tradition to follow -- I'm most interested in Theravada and Zen, though there are aspects to Pure Land which I find appealing as well. Looking forward to the sutta study group and, in general, some lively discussions.

Welcome Lazy Eye. I remember answering one of your questions over at e-sangha a couple of days ago.Welcome to Dhamma Wheel!

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill